Do International Migration and Remittances Reduce Poverty in Developing Countries?

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1 World Development Vol. 33, No. 10, pp , 2005 Ó 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved Printed in Great Britain X/$ - see front matter doi: /j.worlddev Do International Migration and Remittances Reduce Poverty in Developing Countries? RICHARD H. ADAMS JR. and JOHN PAGE * World Bank, Washington, DC, USA Summary. Few studies have examined the impact of international migration and remittances on poverty in the developing world. This paper fills this lacuna by constructing and analyzing a new data set on international migration, remittances, inequality, and poverty from 71 developing countries. The results show that both international migration and remittances significantly reduce the level, depth, and severity of poverty in the developing world. After instrumenting for the possible endogeneity of international migration, and controlling for various factors, results suggest that, on average, a 10% increase in the share of international migrants in a country s population will lead to a 2.1% decline in the share of people living on less than $1.00 per person per day. After instrumenting for the possible endogeneity of international remittances, a similar 10% increase in per capita official international remittances will lead to a 3.5% decline in the share of people living in poverty. Ó 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Key words international migration, remittances, poverty 1. INTRODUCTION International migration is one of the most important factors affecting economic relations between developed and developing countries in the 21st century. At the start of the century, it was estimated that about 175 million people roughly 3% of the world population lived and worked outside the country of their birth (United Nations, 2002). The international remittances sent back home by these migrant workers have a profound impact on the developing countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. According to Global Development Finance (World Bank, 2004), official international remittances sent home by migrant workers represent the second most important source of external funding in developing countries. 1 Official international remittances now total $93 billion per year (Ratha, 2004) and are about twice as large as the level of official aid-related inflows to developing countries. 2 Despite the ever-increasing size of official international remittances, very little attention has been paid to analyzing the poverty impact of these financial transfers on developing countries. While a small handful of studies have 1645 examined the impact of international remittances on poverty in specific village or country settings, 3 we are not aware of any studies which examine the impact of international remsittances on poverty in a broad range of developing countries. Two factors seem to be responsible: The first is a lack of poverty data; it is quite difficult to estimate accurate and meaningful poverty headcounts in a broad and diverse range of developing countries. The second factor relates to the nature of data on international migration and remittances. Not only do few developing countries publish records on migration flows, but also many developed countries which do keep records on migration tend to undercount the large number of illegal migrants living within their borders. At the same time, the available data on international remittances do not * Work on this paper was funded by a World Bank Small Research Grant ( ). For helpful comments on earlier drafts, we would like to thank Francois Bourguignon, Maurice Schiff, and four anonymous reviewers. We would also like to thank Kalpana Mehra for fine research assistance. Final revision accepted: May 6, 2005.

2 1646 WORLD DEVELOPMENT include the large (and unknown) sum of remittance monies which are transmitted through informal, unofficial channels. As a result of these data problems, many key questions remain unanswered. Exactly what is the effect of international migration on poverty in the developing world? How do the official remittances sent home by international migrants affect the level, depth, and severity of poverty in the developing world? This paper proposes to answer these, and similar, questions using a new data set composed of 71 developing countries. This data set includes all those low- and middle-income developing countries for which reasonable information on poverty, inequality, international migration, and remittances could be assembled. It includes countries drawn from each major region of the developing world: Latin America and the Caribbean, Middle East and North Africa, Europe and Central Asia, East Asia, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. The balance of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 sets the stage by reviewing the findings of recent village- or country-level studies on the relationship between international migration, remittances, inequality, and poverty. Section 3 presents the new data set and describes how these data are used to calculate the relevant migration, remittances, and poverty variables. Section 4 uses the new data to econometrically estimate the impact of two variables international migration and remittances on poverty in the developing world. This part finds that both international migration and remittances reduce the level, depth, and severity of poverty in the developing world. However, it is possible that these variables may be endogenous to poverty: that is, international migration and remittances may reduce poverty in the developing world, but poverty in the developing world may also affect the number of international migrants being produced and the level of remittances being received. For this reason, Section 5 employs an instrumental variables strategy to isolate the overall effect of these two variables on poverty. The main instruments employed in this section are distance between remittance-sending and -receiving countries, level of education, and government stability. Using these three variables as instruments, the paper finds that instrumented international migration and remittances still reduce the level, depth, and severity of poverty in developing countries. The final section of the paper, Section 6, summarizes the findings and presents policy implications. 2. RECENT STUDIES ON INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, REMITTANCES, AND POVERTY There is little agreement and scant information in the literature concerning the impact of international migration and remittances on poverty. Stahl, for example, writes that migration, particularly international migration, can be an expensive venture. Clearly, it is going to be the better-off households which will be more capable of (producing international migrants) (1982, p. 883). Similarly, Lipton, in a study of 40 villages in India that focuses more on internal than international migration, found that migration increases intra-rural inequalities... because better-off migrants are Ôpulled toward fairly firm prospects of a job (in a city or abroad), whereas the poor are Ôpushed by rural poverty and labor-replacing methods (1980, p. 227). Other analysts, however, suggest that the poor can and do benefit from international migration and remittances. For example, Stark and Taylor find that in rural Mexico relatively deprived households are more likely to engage in international migration than are better-off households (1989, pp ). In a similar vein, Adams finds that in rural Egypt, the number of poor households declines by 9.8% when household income includes international remittances, and that remittances account for 14.7% of total income of poor households (1991, pp ). While the findings of these past studies are instructive, their conclusions are of limited usefulness due to a small sample size. For instance, the findings of Stark and Taylor are based on 61 households from two Mexican villages while those of Adams are based on 1,000 households from three Egyptian villages. Clearly, there is a need to extend the scope of these studies to see if their findings hold for a larger and broader collection of developing countries. 3. NEW DATA ON INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, REMITTANCES, INEQUALITY, AND POVERTY Our evaluation of the impact of international migration and remittances on poverty in developing countries is based on a new data set that

3 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION AND REMITTANCES 1647 includes information on international migration, remittances, inequality, and poverty for 71 low-income and middle-income developing countries. 4 These countries were selected because it was possible to find relevant migration, remittances, inequality, and poverty data for all of these countries since the year Since it was not easy to assemble this data set, and data problems still plague this (and all other) studies on international migration and remittances, it is useful to spell out how this information was assembled. In the case of migration, few, if any, of the major labor-exporting countries publish accurate records on the number of international migrants that they produce. It is therefore necessary to estimate migration stocks and flows by using data collected by the main laborreceiving countries. For the purposes of this paper, the main labor-receiving countries (regions) include two: United States and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (Europe), excluding North America and Asia. 6 Unfortunately, no data are available on the amount of migration to the third and fourth most important laborreceiving regions in the world, the Arab Gulf and South Africa. Because of their importance to labor-exporting countries, remittance flows tend to be the best measured aspect of the migration experience. For instance, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) keeps annual records of the amount of worker remittances received by each labor-exporting country. 7 However, as noted above, the IMF only reports data on official worker remittance flows, that is, remittance monies which are transmitted through official banking channels. Since a large (and unknown) proportion of remittance monies is transmitted through private, unrecorded channels, the level of remittances recorded by the IMF underestimates the actual flow of remittance monies returning to labor-exporting countries. Finally, with respect to poverty, many developing countries especially the smaller population countries have not conducted the type of nationally representative household budget surveys that are needed to estimate poverty. For example, of the 157 developing countries classified as low- or middle-income by the World Bank, 8 only 81 countries (52%) have published the results of any household budget survey. Of these 81 developing countries, missing data on income inequality reduced the size of the data set used in this paper to 71 countries. 9 Table 9 gives the countries, regions, poverty, inequality, migration, and remittances indicators included in the new data set. The data set includes a total of 184 observations; an observation is any point in time for which data on income, poverty and inequality exist. The data set is notable in that it includes 36 observations (from 18 countries) in Sub-Saharan Africa, a region for which migration, remittances and poverty data are relatively rare. It also includes observations from countries in all other regions of the developing world. Table 9 reports three different poverty measures: The first, the poverty headcount index, set at $1 per person per day, measures the percent of the population living beneath that poverty line at the time of the survey. 10 However, the headcount index ignores the depth of poverty, that is, the amount by which the average expenditures (income) of the poor fall short of the poverty line. 11 We therefore also report the poverty gap index, which measures in percentage terms how far the average expenditures (income) of the poor fall short of the poverty line. For instance, a poverty gap of 10% means that the average poor person s expenditures (income) are 90% of the poverty line. The third poverty measure the squared poverty gap index indicates the severity of poverty. The squared poverty gap index possesses useful analytical properties, because it is sensitive to changes in distribution among the poor. 12 To measure inequality, Table 9 uses the Gini coefficient. In the table, this measure is normalized by household size and the distributions are weighted by household size so that a given quintile (such as the lowest quintile) has the same share of population as other quintiles across the sample. The remaining variables in Table 9 international migration as share of country population and per capita official international remittances are of key importance to this study. Since these two variables must be estimated using some rather heroic assumptions, it is crucial to discuss each variable in turn. In the absence of detailed records on international migration in the labor-exporting countries, the migration variable in this study is estimated by combining data from the two main labor-receiving regions of the world: the United States and OECD (Europe). Specifically, the migration variable is constructed using three steps. The first step uses data from the 1990 and 2000 US Population Censuses on the place of birth for the foreign-born

4 1648 WORLD DEVELOPMENT population. While these data are disaggregated by country of birth for about 50 different labor-exporting countries, it is not at all clear whether all of these foreign-born people are, in fact international migrants. For example, a person born in Mexico and brought to the United States as an infant would probably not consider himself as a migrant. Moreover, it is also not clear how many of those who enter the United States illegally are, in fact, included in the foreign-born population figures. As some observers have suggested, the US Census data may be grossly undercounting the actual migrant population that is living legally or illegally in the United States. 13 The second step in calculating the migration variable is to estimate the number of foreign-born living in the OECD (Europe), excluding North America and Asia. 14 Unfortunately, the OECD (Europe) data are not as detailed as the US Census data, and differ from the US data in several key ways. Most basically, the OECD (Europe) data use a different way of classifying immigrants. Since US-born children of immigrants have US citizenship, the United States defines an immigrant as a person who was born abroad to non-us citizens. Most OECD (Europe) countries, however, follow an ethnicity-based definition of immigration status. This method classifies a person on the basis of the ethnicity of the parent, rather than on place of birth. Thus, a child of Turkish parents born in Germany is typically classified as an immigrant. This different way of classifying immigrants has the net effect of increasing the stock of immigrants in any particular OECD (Europe) country, and perhaps biasing our estimates by including a number of migrants who were actually born, raised, and educated in that OECD (Europe) country. Another key difference between the OECD (Europe) data and the US data has to do with the number of labor-exporting countries recorded. While the US Census data can be used to count the number of foreign-born (or migrants) from about 50 different countries, the OECD (Europe) data only record the number of foreign-born (or migrants) in each European country coming from 10 or 15 countries. While this is not a significant problem for large-labor-exporting countries (like Turkey), which send many migrants to Europe, it is a problem for smaller labor-exporting countries, such as Brazil or Sri Lanka, where the actual number of migrants to any particular European country might not be recorded at all. The final step in calculating the migration variable is to take the sum of the foreign born from each labor-exporting country that are living in either the United States or the OECD (Europe), and divide this sum by the population of each developing country. These migration as share of country population figures are the ones which appear in Table 9. In all likelihood, these figures seriously underestimate the actual number of international migrants produced by any given labor-exporting country, because they do not include the large number of illegal migrants working in the United States and OECD (Europe). These figures also do not count the unknown number of international migrants working in other labor-receiving regions (like the Arab Gulf). The process of defining the remittances variable in Table 9 is more straightforward, but it also involves one heroic assumption. All remittance data come from the IMF, Balance of Payments Statistics Yearbook. As noted above, the main problem with these data is that they count only remittance monies which enter through official, banking channels; they do not include the large (and unknown) amount of remittance monies which are sent home through private, unofficial channels. For example, in one major labor-exporting country Egypt it has been estimated that unofficial remittances amount to between one-third and one-half of total remittances. 15 For this reason, it is likely that the official remittance figures reported in Table 9 are gross underestimates of the actual level of total remittances (official and unofficial) entering each labor-exporting country. 4. INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, REMITTANCES, AND POVERTY: OLS RESULTS In this section, we use the crosscountry data to analyze how international migration and remittances affect poverty in the developing world. Using the basic growth poverty model suggested by Ravallion (1997) and Ravallion and Chen (1997), the relationship that we want to estimate can be written as log P it ¼ a i þ b 1 log l it þ b 2 logðg it Þ þ b 3 logðx it Þþ it ði ¼ 1;...; N; t ¼ 1;...; T i Þ; ð1þ where P is the measure of poverty in country i at time t, a i is a fixed effect reflecting time differ-

5 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION AND REMITTANCES 1649 ences between countries, b 1 is the growth elasticity of poverty with respect to mean per capita income given by l, b 2 is the elasticity of poverty with respect to income inequality given by the Gini coefficient, g, b 3 is the elasticity of poverty with respect to variable x (such as international migration or remittances) and is an error term that includes errors in the poverty measure. Eqn. (1) represents the basic model of poverty determination used by a host of researchers. 16 The model assumes that economic growth as measured by increases in mean per capita income will reduce poverty. The relationship between poverty and the income variable is therefore expected to be negative and significant. The model also assumes that the level of income inequality affects poverty reduction. Since past work has shown that a given rate of economic growth reduces poverty more in low-inequality countries, as opposed to highinequality countries, 17 the income inequality variable is expected to be positive and significant. The innovation in this study is to introduce into Eqn. (1) a variable measuring the level of international migration or remittances. Controlling for income and its distribution, we test the hypothesis that countries producing more international migrants or receiving more international remittances will have less poverty. The income variable in Eqn. (1) can be measured in two different ways: (1) per capita GDP, in purchasing power parity (PPP) units, as measured from national accounts data; and (2) per capita survey mean income (expenditure), as calculated from household budget surveys done in the various developing countries. As Deaton (2001) and others have shown, 18 these two measures of income typically do not agree. Income (expenditure) as measured by household surveys is calculated from the responses of individual households. However, income as measured by GDP data comes from the national accounts, which measure household income as a residual item, so that errors and omission elsewhere in the accounts automatically affect the calculation of household income (expenditure). Since the national accounts data also include many items (such as the expenditures of nonprofit organizations and the imputed rent of owner-occupied dwellings) which are not included in the household surveys, it is little wonder that the two measures of income do not correspond. For the purposes of this study, we will estimate Eqn. (1) using both measures of income. It should be noted that neither measure of income includes international remittance income. The GDP data from national accounts should not include remittance income from abroad, and our experience with household budget surveys suggests that most of these surveys do not adequately capture international remittance income because they do not include questions on remittances. 19 Other researchers have often estimated Eqn. (1) in first differences, in order to deal with possible correlation problems between the variables, since the dependent and independent variables are drawn from the same single source of data (household budget surveys). 20 In this study, however, we will estimate Eqn. (1) as a level equation since the dependent and independent variables come from different sources of data: the dependent variable being drawn from household budget surveys and the independent variables (for GDP, international migration, and international remittances) from various other sources. 21 We will also estimate Eqn. (1) using the two measures of international migration and remittances developed in the last section: international migration as a share of country population and per capita official international remittances received by a developing country. Given all of the problems involved in constructing these two variables, as well as the fact that a number of the countries still have missing/ incomplete migration or remittance data, it is not surprising that these two measures are not highly correlated in the data set (simple correlation of 0.579). Moreover, it is likely that a sizeable share of international migrants may migrate, but not remit. For all of these reasons, it seems useful to use each of these measures to test the robustness of our findings regarding the impact of international migration and remittances on poverty in the developing world. Using the international migration data, the OLS estimates of Eqn. (1) are presented in Tables 1 (using per capita GDP) and 2 (using survey mean income). To control for fixed effects by geographic region of the world, five regional dummy variables are added to the model. 22 In each table, results are shown first without, and then with, regional dummies. Since all of the variables are estimated in log terms, the results can be interpreted as elasticities of poverty with respect to the relevant variable. In Tables 1 and 2, the coefficients for both of the income variables per capita GDP and survey mean income are of the expected

8 1652 WORLD DEVELOPMENT (negative) sign and statistically significant in all cases. In both tables, the poverty elasticities with respect to income inequality (Gini coefficient) are also of the expected (positive) sign, and their magnitude is consistent with other recent analyses of poverty reduction (Adams, 2004; Ravallion, 1997). However, the results for the model as a whole are better and more precise in Table 2 using survey mean income: the R 2 measures increase from the range to For this reason, we will focus on Table 2. When the dependent variable in Table 2 is poverty headcount or poverty gap, the results for the international migration variable are negative and statistically significant. However, when the dependent variable is squared poverty gap, the international migration variable is not significant. For the poverty headcount measure, the estimates suggest that, on average, a 10% increase in the share of international migrants in a country s population will lead to a 1.4% decline in the share of people living on less than $1.00 per person per day. Tables 3 (using per capita GDP) and 4 (using survey mean income) show the results when Eqn. (1) is estimated using international remittances data. Since the results for the model are better and more precise in Table 4 using survey mean income, we will focus on these results. TheremittancevariableinTable 4 per capita official international remittances has a negative and statistically significant impact on each of the three poverty measures: headcount, poverty gap, and squared poverty gap. Estimates for the poverty headcount measure suggest that, on average, a 10% increase in per capita official international remittances will lead to a 1.8% decline in the share of people living in poverty. Table 4 shows that remittances will have a slightly larger impact on poverty reduction when poverty is measured by the more sensitive poverty measures: poverty gap and squared poverty gap. 5. OFFICIAL INTERNATIONAL REMITTANCES AND POVERTY: IV RESULTS As noted at the outset, one possible problem with Eqn. (1) is that it assumes that all of the right-hand side variables in the model including international migration and remittances are exogenous to poverty. However, it is possible that these two variables may be endogenous to poverty. Reverse causality may be taking place: international migration and remittances may be reducing poverty, but poverty may also be affecting the share of migrants being produced and the level of international remittances being received. Without accounting for this reverse causality, all of the estimated coefficients in Tables 1 4 may be biased. One way of accounting for possible endogenous regressors is to pursue an instrumental variables approach. This is the strategy adopted in this section. In our data set, there are three possible instruments for the international migration and remittances variables. The first instrument is distance (miles) between the remittance-sending area (United States, OECD (Europe), or the Persian Gulf) and the remittance-receiving country. 23 This variable seems like a good instrument because various studies of the determinants of international migration have found that distance between labor-receiving and exporting countries is usually negatively and significantly related to the level of international migration. For example, in a study of migration rates to the United States from 81 developing countries, Hatton and Williamson (2003, p. 11) find that distance from the United States is negatively and significantly related to the level of international migration from that country. 24 A second instrument for the international migration and remittances variables is education, specifically, the percent of the population over age 25 that have completed secondary education in a developing country. This variable seems useful because human capital theory generally suggests that education is positively related with international migration (and presumably international remittances) because educated people typically enjoy greater employment and income-earning opportunities in labor-receiving countries. 25 While new emerging research suggests that international migrants may not always be positively selected with respect to education, 26 education still seems to play an important role in the decision to migrate. The final instrument that can be used is government stability, 27 which is a measure of the level of political stability in each country. The expected outcome of this variable is not straightforward. Holding other factors constant, we would expect that countries with more unstable governments would produce larger numbers of international migrants. However, whether or not these increased numbers of migrants will produce larger levels of remit-

11 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION AND REMITTANCES 1655 tances would depend on the extent to which political instability affects the incentives of migrants to remit. Since migrants remit for both altruistic and economic reasons, the net impact of political instability probably positive for altruistic motives, as migrants seek to cushion their relatives from instability, and probably negative for economic motives to the extent that political instability undermines the investment climate is ambiguous. Tables 5 and 6 present the first-stage instrumental variables regression results when various combinations of these variables are used to instrument international migration and remittances, respectively. In each table, Eqns. (1) (4) present the results when the exogenous variables include per capita GDP, and Eqns. (5) (8) present the results when the exogenous variables include survey mean income. In both tables, the IV equations containing only the distance variable are arguably the most exogenous and have the single highest predictive power (R 2 from 0.44 to 0.48). As expected, the distance variable is always negative and highly significant, suggesting that as the distance between remittance-sending and -receiving countries increases, the level of international migration and remittances received falls. When instrumenting for international migration (Table 5), the education variable is positive and highly significant. As hypothesized, this implies that countries with a higher share of educated people also produce more international migrants. The other variable government stability is statistically insignificant in both tables, and therefore subject to weak instrument concerns. However, when all three variables are combined together Eqns. (4) and (8) in Tables 5 and 6 the p-values for the F-statistic of the excluded instruments are all less than 0.01 for the prediction of international migration and remittances, while the F-statistics themselves are over 8. When using all three variables as instruments, international migration is predicted somewhat better than official international remittances, but the F-statistics still show instrument relevance. Tables 7 and 8 present the second-stage IV results when the international migration and remittance variables are instrumented by all three variables: distance, education, and government stability. Table 7 shows the IV results for international migration and Table 8 shows results for international remittances. Both of these tables are based on survey mean income; results based upon per capita GDP are similar and available from the authors upon request. Comparing the OLS and IV estimates for international migration (Tables 2 and 7), we find that the coefficients for the instrumented international migration variable in Table 7 are more negative and of greater significance. Comparing the OLS and IV estimates for official international remittances (Tables 4 and 8) yields similar results. For example, while the IV estimates for the poverty headcount measure suggest that, on average, a 10% increase in per capita official remittances will lead to a 3.5% decline in the share of people living in poverty (Table 8), the OLS estimates suggest that a similar increase in official remittances will lead to only a 1.8% decline in the share of poor people (Table 4). Considered as a whole, the IV results suggest that after instrumenting for the possible endogeneity of international migration and remittances, these two variables still have a negative and statistically significant impact upon poverty. Instrumented international migration has a negative and significant impact on two of the three poverty measures (Table 7), while instrumented official international remittances has a negative and significant impact on all three of the poverty measures (Table 8). In Table 8, the relative magnitudes of the elasticity estimates on survey mean income and instrumented official international remittances imply that an increase in international remittances has about twice the poverty-reducing impact as an increase in other sources of household income. Evaluated at the sample mean, an increase in $1 in instrumented per capita official international remittances (from $17.15 to $18.15) will lead to a 2.04% reduction in the poverty headcount. By comparison, at the sample mean, a $1 increase in per capita survey mean income (from $1, to $1,629.60) will yield a 0.98% reduction in the poverty headcount. 28 In other words, dollar for dollar the income remitted by migrants from abroad reduces poverty much more than income generated by domestic economic activity. 6. CONCLUSIONS AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS This paper has used a new data set on international migration, remittances, inequality, and poverty from 71 developing countries to examine the impact of international migration, and remittances on poverty in the developing world.

16 1660 WORLD DEVELOPMENT Three findings and two policy implications emerge. First, both international migration and remittances have a strong, statistically significant impact on reducing poverty in the developing world. After instrumenting for the possible endogeneity of international migration, and controlling for level of income, income inequality and geographic region, results for the poverty headcount measure suggest that, on average, a 10% increase in the share of international migrants in a country s population will lead to a 2.1% decline in the share of people living on less than $1.00 per person per day. After instrumenting for the possible endogeneity of international remittances, a similar 10% increase in per capita official international remittances will lead, on average, to a 3.5% decline in the share of people living in poverty. The fact that both international migration and international remittances reduce poverty in the developing world is important because data on each of these variables are incomplete and subject to underreporting in many developing countries. By analyzing samples which include information on each of these variables, we have been able to test the migration remittances poverty relationship for the largest number of labor-exporting countries possible. The results provide strong, robust evidence of the poverty-reducing impact of both international migration and remittances in the developing world. The second finding relates to endogeneity. Comparing the instrumented and noninstrumented (OLS) estimates for international migration and remittances in this paper shows that the coefficients for the instrumented variables are larger and more precisely estimated than those for the noninstrumented variables. This suggests that international migration and remittances may be endogenous to poverty: that is, we cannot exclude the hypothesis that variations in poverty in developing countries cause changes in both the share of migrants going to work abroad and in the level of official international remittances sent home. However, our results show that the extent of this endogeneity bias on poverty is not large in absolute terms: the instrumented results suggest that, on average, a 10% increase in per capita official remittances will lead to a 3.5% decline in the share of people living in poverty, while the noninstrumented (OLS) estimates suggest that a similar increase in official remittances will lead to a 1.8% decline in the share of poor people. More work needs to be done on this topic. The third finding is more of a plea than a conclusion. From the standpoint of future work on this topic, more attention needs to be paid to collecting and publishing better data on international migration and remittances. With respect to international migration, it would be useful if developing countries would start publishing records on the number and destination of their international migrants. In many developing countries, these data are already being collected, but they are not being published. With respect to international remittances, the IMF should make greater efforts to count the amount of remittance monies that are transmitted through informal, unofficial channels. It is possible that poor people, especially poor people from countries located near major labor-receiving regions, are more likely to remit through informal, unofficial channels. For this reason, a full and complete accounting of the impact of international remittances (official and unofficial) on poverty in the developing world needs more accurate data on the large level of unofficial remittances returning to developing countries. Our findings point to two policy recommendations. With respect to migration, the positive impact of international migration on poverty makes the policy question of managing migration assume greater importance in the international development community. While the international community has paid considerable attention in the past to international movements of goods, services, and finance, much less attention has been paid to the international movements of people. The results of this paper suggest that there would be substantial potential benefits to the world s poor if more international attention were focused on integrating migration policy within the larger global dialogue on economic development and poverty reduction. With respect to remittances, the international community needs to take efforts to reduce the current high transaction costs of remitting money to labor-exporting countries. At present, high transaction costs resulting from lack of competition, regulation, and/or low levels of financial sector performance in labor-exporting countries act as a type of regressive tax on international migrants, who often tend to be poor and to remit small amounts of money with each remittance transaction. Lowering the transactions costs of remittances will help to increase the poverty-reducing impact of international remittances and will also encourage a larger share of remittances to flow through formal financial channels.

17 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION AND REMITTANCES 1661 NOTES 1. Foreign direct investment (FDI) is the most important source of external funding for developing countries. 2. In addition to the $93 billion per year in international remittances which return through official banking channels, a large and unrecorded amount of international remittance monies is transmitted through unofficial and informal channels. One recent IMF study (El-Qorchi, Maimbo, & Wilson, 2003) estimated that unofficial transfers of remittances to the developing world currently amount to $10 billion per year. 3. See, for example, Adams (1991, 1993), Taylor (1992), Gustafson and Makonnen (1993), Taylor, Zabin, and Eckhoff (1999), and Stark (1991). 4. Low-income and middle-income countries are those which are classified as such by the World Bank (2000, pp ). Low-income countries are those with 1999 GNP per capita $756 or less; middle-income countries are those with 1999 GNP per capita of $756 $9, In line with other crossnational studies of poverty, 1980 was selected as a cutoff point because the poverty data prior to that year are far less comprehensive. See, for example, Ravallion and Chen (1997) and Adams (2004). 6. For the purposes of this study, OECD (Europe) includes 21 countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and United Kingdom. 7. IMF records annual flow in international remittances in its publication, Balance of Payments Statistics Yearbook (Washington, DC). 8. For a full list of these 157 developing countries, see World Bank (2000, pp ). 9. For example, China was eliminated from the data set because of missing income inequality data for the country as a whole. 10. To ensure compatibility across countries, all of the poverty lines in Table 9 are international poverty lines, set at estimates of $1.08 per person per day in 1993 purchasing power parity (PPP) exchange rates. The PPP exchange rates are used so that $1.08 is worth roughly the same in all countries. PPP values are calculated by pricing a representative bundle of goods in each country and comparing the local cost of that bundle with the US dollar cost of the same bundle. In calculating PPP values, the comparison of local costs with US costs is done using conversion estimates produced by the World Bank. 11. In this paper the terms expenditure and income are used interchangeably. 12. While a transfer of expenditures from a poor person to a poorer person will not change the headcount index or the poverty gap index, it will decrease the squared poverty gap index. 13. In 2002, the stock of illegal immigrants in the United States was estimated at 9.3 million, or about 26% of the total stock of the foreign-born population. See Passel, Capps, and Fix (2004). 14. All of the data on the foreign-born population living in the OECD (Europe) comes from OECD, Trends in International Migration (Paris, various issues). 15. Adams (1991, p. 13). 16. In addition to Ravallion (1997) and Ravallion and Chen (1997), see Squire (1993), Collier and Dollar (2001), and Bhalla (2002). 17. On this point, see Birdsall and Londono (1997) and Ravallion (1997). 18. See Deaton (2001, pp ) and Adams (2004). 19. However, in those household surveys where survey mean income is proxied by survey mean expenditure, the income variable may, to some extent, capture the impact of remittances income on household expenditure. 20. See, for example, Ravallion and Chen (1997). 21. When Eqn. (1) is estimated using survey mean income, the dependent and independent variables in the equation are both based on data from household budget surveys. 22. The five regional dummy variables are those for East Asia, Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Middle East and North Africa, and South Asia. Sub-Saharan Africa is the omitted regional dummy.

18 1662 WORLD DEVELOPMENT 23. In this study, distance between remittance-sending region (United States, OECD (Europe), or Persian Gulf) and remittance-receiving country is measured for each individual developing country as the miles between the borders of that country and the main region from which it receives remittances. For example, for Latin American countries, it is the distance to the United States, for North African countries, it is the distance to OECD (Europe), and for South Asian countries, it is the distance to the Persian Gulf. 24. For other empirical studies of the relationship between distance and international migration, see Karemera, Oguledo, and Davis (2000) and Vogler and Rotte (2000). 25. See, for example, Harris and Todaro (1970). 26. For example, Mora and Taylor (2005) find that education has no significant effect on the level of international migration from rural Mexico and Adams (1993) finds similar results for rural Egypt. On this point more generally, Borjas (1999) argues that international migrants will be negatively selected with respect to education in countries with high income inequality. 27. Government stability is measured by ratings published on a monthly basis by the PRS Group in the International Country Risk Guide. These ratings for government stability have a scale of zero to 12, with zero representing countries with very unstable government to 11 representing those countries with very stable government. For instance, in June 2002, the United States had a government stability rating of 11, while Poland had a rating of The relevant calculations from Table 8 are as follows. For instrumented per capita international remittances, (18.15/ ) * ( 0.351) = ( 2.046). For survey mean income, (1,629.60/1, ) * ( 1.590) = ( 0.976). REFERENCES Adams, R., Jr. (1991). The effects of international remittances on poverty, inequality and development in rural Egypt. Research Report 86. International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC. Adams, R. Jr. (1993). The economic and demographic determinants of international migration in rural Egypt. Journal of Development Studies, 30, Adams, R. Jr. (2004). Economic growth, inequality and poverty: estimating the growth elasticity of poverty. World Development, 32, Bhalla, S. (2002). Imagine there s no country: Poverty, inequality and growth in the era of globalization. Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics. Birdsall, N., & Londono, J. (1997). Asset inequality matters: an assessment of the World Bank s approach to poverty reduction. American Economic Review, 87, Borjas, G. (1999). Heaven s Door: Immigration policy and the American economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Collier, P., & Dollar, D. (2001). Can the world cut poverty in half. How policy reform and effective aid can meet international development goals. World Development, 29, Deaton, A. (2001). Counting the world s poor: problems and possible solutions. World Bank Research Observer, 16, El-Qorchi, M., Maimbo, S., & Wilson, J. (2003). Informal funds transfer systems: an analysis of the informal hawala system. IMF Occasional Paper 222. International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC. Gustafson, B., & Makonnen, N. (1993). Poverty and remittances in Lesotho. Journal of African Economies, 2, Harris, J., & Todaro, M. (1970). Migration, unemployment and development: a two-sector analysis. American Economic Review, 60, Hatton, T., & Williamson, J. (2003). What fundamentals drive world migration? Wider Discussion Paper No. 2003/23. Helsinki, Finland. International Monetary Fund (various). Balance of payments statistics yearbook. International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC. Karemera, D., Oguledo, V., & Davis, B. (2000). A gravity model analysis of international migration to North America. Applied Economics, 32, Lipton, M. (1980). Migration from rural areas of poor countries: the impact on rural productivity and income distribution. World Development, 8, Mora, J., & Taylor, J. E. (2005). Determinants of international migration: disentangling individual, household and community effects. Unpublished manuscript. Department of Agricultural Economics, University of California, Davis, USA. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (various). Trends in international migration. Paris, France. Passel, J., Capps, R., Fix, M. (2004). Undocumented immigrants: facts and figures. Unpublished manuscript. Urban Institute, Washington, DC. Ratha, D. (2004). Enhancing the developmental effect of workers remittances to developing countries. In Global development finance (pp ). Washington, DC: World Bank. Ravallion, M. (1997). Can high-inequality developing countries escape absolute poverty? Economics Letters, 56,

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